A History of the National Book Awards in Young People’s Literature - An Online Exhibition

Up All Night Reading

Up
All Night:A
History of the National Book Awards in Young People’s LiteratureAn
Online Exhibition

Remember what it was
like to be a kid, so immersed in a great book that you stayed up past
your bedtime voraciously turning pages? Or perhaps you’re a young
reader now, struggling to find a story that speaks to you and
reflects your surroundings and experiences. Whether you want to
revisit your favorite childhood reads or discover a title or author
that is totally new to you, you’ve come to the right place.

The National Book
Award in Children’s Literature was first presented to the
Dutch-American author Meindert DeJong for Journey from Peppermint
Street in 1969. Since then, the category has had many names and
included several subcategories, from Nonfiction to Picture Book, and
there were a number of years when the National Book Award wasn’t
presented in this category at all.* It returned in 1996, however, and
has been known ever since as Young People’s Literature―an
umbrella that has covered everything from graphic novels to
novels-in-verse.

To present the 235
titles that have won and been nominated for the National Book Award
in this category, we enlisted the help of past National Book Award
Winners and Finalists, winners of our Innovations
in Reading Prize, students in our after-school reading program
for middle-schoolers, BookUp,
and others. Their contributions, which range from interviews and
videos to collages and other artworks, are listed below.

This exhibition is
for everyone: grandparents, parents, children, teachers, librarians,
writers, and, of course, readers. It’s also for all those
self-professed non-readers out there. We guarantee there’s
something in here even for you.

Thanks for visiting,
and enjoy the exhibition!

*From 1950 through 1963, the National Book Award was presented only
in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Additional
categories, such as Arts and Letters, were introduced in 1964, but
the Award for Children’s Books didn’t appear until 1969. It
continued in various forms through 1983, when the Awards were again
reduced to only three categories. The Award for children’s
literature didn’t appear again until 1996, when its current
iteration, Young People’s Literature, was introduced.

2007:
The Absolutely True Diary of a
Part-Time Indian by Sherman
Alexie (BookUpNYC students at I.S. 318; Carole Mashamesh)

2007:
Story of a Girl
by Sara Zarr (Lilli Leight)

2008:
The Disreputable History of
Frankie Landau-Banks by E.
Lockhart (Daniel Ehrenhaft)

2009:
Stitches
by David Small (Gary D. Schmidt)

2010:
Ship Breaker
by Paolo Bacigalupi (William Alexander)

2011:
Inside Out & Back Again
by Thanhha Lai (Eliot Schrefer; Hannah Quirk)

2011:
Okay for Now
by Gary D. Schmidt (readergirlz/Dia Calhoun; Carole Mashamesh with
her students at Tompkins Square Middle School)

2012:
Goblin Secrets
by William Alexander (Marly Youmans)

2012:
Out of Reach
by Carrie Arcos (Sydney Mok and Susan Wu of BookUpNYC at University
Settlement; BookUpNYC students at Kingsbridge Heights Community
Center; Jordan Triplett)

2012:
Never Fall Down
by Patricia McCormick (Literacy Chicago’s Reading Against the
Odds/Angela Halls and Leslie Reese; Sarah Chin of BookUpNYC at
University Settlement)

2012:
Endangered
by Eliot Schrefer (Lilli Leight; Diane Tuccillo)

PRODUCTION CREDITS:

Image by Miguel
GuerraExhibition design
and layout by Meredith AndrewsBook and author
information compiled by Amy GallAppreciations
curated and edited by Rebecca KeithCopywriting and
editing by Katie McDonough

The Year in Literature: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert C. O’Brien won the Newbery Medal.

More Information: Donovan’s
1969 book I’ll
Get There. It Better Be Worth The Trip. concerns
a romantic relationship between two teenage boys and is considered to
be one of the first if not the first young adult book to address
homosexuality in a positive manner.